Oversight often lacking in suburbs
and social response to police violence has been muted in Bay Area suburbs, where useof force is subject to less oversight than in cities. The reasons are complicated, but the reality is unsettling: more deaths in areas with fewer mechanisms to bring justice to families, transparency to the public or robust investigations of the officers involved.
Data compiled from local law enforcement agencies, the Fatal Encounters tracking project and Washington Post’s database of fatal police shootings provides a geographical snapshot of law enforcement violence in the Bay Area this year. It showed 10 fatal shootings and two other deadly encounters. Of those, two occurred in San Jose, a major metropolitan city. The rest took place in the suburbs.
Fremont and San Jose topped the list, each with two lethal incidents, followed by Antioch, Alameda, Hayward, Daly City, Pittsburg, Danville and :acaville.
While most Bay Area residents live in suburbs, police in urban centers deal with more people on a daytoday basis. But big departments generally have the tools — and the will — to intercede when a confrontation goes awry, said Professor Jack Glaser of 5C Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy. He noted that larger, metropolitan agencies may face protests and political fallout if an incident ends in death.
“They’re probably going to have more investment in the kind of training and policies that they need to prevent these things from happening,” Glaser said.
Civil rights attorney John Burris said he’s noticed that police in cities like San Francisco and Oakland try to refrain from using excessive force — a byproduct of police commissions, civilian review boards and, in Oakland, 1t years of federal court oversight.
Burris represents the families of many people who die in police custody, including Quinto× Walnut Creek resident Miles Hall× Laudemer Arboleda and Tyrell Wilson, who were shot by the same officer in Danville× and Roger Allen, who was shot and killed by Daly City police in April.
When protests over police brutality swept the country last year, Bay Area suburbs had to confront their own troubled histories and political institutions.
Some had failed to apply basic tools such as bodyworn cameras, even as their populations grew and public attitudes changed.
In certain ways, the State House in Sacramento has reacted more quickly to suburban police deaths than the individual cities. For example, state Assembly Member Rebecca BauerKahan, a Democrat representing the Tri:alley, is sponsoring a bill to start a statewide hotline and dispatch system for civilian mental health teams, funded by a phone utility fee. The inspiration: the 201¥ police shooting of Hall in Walnut Creek, which generated controversy, though Contra Costa County District Attorney Diana Becton ultimately decided the officers’ actions were justified.
Walnut Creek Mayor Kevin Wilk cited several measures the city took after the shooting of Hall, a 23yearold Black man, including antibias training, nonlethal restraint devices for the police and the formation of a community advisory board for the police chief, which lacks the independent oversight powers of a police commission. The Police Department has used bodyworn cameras since 201Ø.
Hall’s mother, Taun Hall, viewed these steps as incremental, partly intended to mollify her family and their supporters, she said.
“We were going to city councils every first and third Tuesday,” she said. “We were showing up in droves. It felt like they didn’t really acknowledge what happened . ... When I met with Rebecca BauerKahan, I felt like she heard me.”
In Antioch, police accountability became a raw topic last year and intensified when Quinto’s death came to light in January. At that time, the city was a decade behind some of its neighbors. It had no independent police commission — all complaints went through the department’s internal affairs — and officers were not required to wear body cameras. As a result, the only visual record of the incident is a wobbly cell phone video taken by QuintoCollins, which shows officers rolling her handcuffed son onto his back, with blood covering his mouth.
Quinto’s stepfather, Robert Collins, was visibly frustrated as he stood outside Holy Cross Cemetery on June 23, after the inurnment.
“There’s the loss of a son, and then you get no closure, because they have no answers,” he said.
Antioch is not the only Bay Area city that seemed out of sync with an era of racial reckonings and heightened scrutiny over law enforcement. When Mario Gonzalez died after Alameda police held him down in April, authorities issued press releases that characterized the situation as a “medical emergency.”
In Danville, an affluent San
Ramon :alley town that contracts with the Contra Costa Sheriff ’s Office to provide police services, an officer was charged with two felonies in April for an onduty killing — but he remains employed by the department. A month before Becton announced the felony charges, the officer, Andrew Hall, shot and killed someone else.
And in Daly City, on the Peninsula, the fatal shooting of Allen on April Ø brought new urgency for bodyworn cameras, which had been under discussion since 201Ø, according to Mayor Juslyn C. Manalo. After a fouryear delay, the City Council approved a l1.3~ million contract for 100 bodyworn cameras and 32 patrol car cameras in May, drawing funds from a revenue measure that voters passed in "ovember.
San Mateo County District
Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe — whose office released the first detailed account of the Allen shooting rather than the Police Department and is reviewing the incident — said he expects to reach a charging decision in August. State Attorney General Rob Bonta declined the City Council’s request to pursue a parallel investigation. Burris said he is waiting to see Wagstaffe’s report before he decides whether to file a civil lawsuit.
Antioch Mayor Lamar Thorpe is hopeful, saying the city’s new string of police reforms coincide with a seismic political and cultural shift. He ran for office last year on a platform that emphasized law enforcement accountability, besting an incumbent who was backed by the police union. With his victory, and that of Council Members Monica Wilson and Tamisha TorresWalker, the Antioch City Council is majority Black.
“It absolutely matters,” Thorpe said in an interview, contrasting Antioch’s current leadership to the majority white council that voted down his proposal for a police reform committee after the death of George Floyd.
The "ovember election gave Thorpe the votes he needed to pass new policies for the Police Department. "onetheless, Antioch police have been slow to share details about the death of Angelo Quinto. They waited a month to publicly disclose the incident, and the Contra Costa County coroner has not released autopsy results. A spokesperson for the Sheriff ’s Office said the incident is still “under doctor’s review.” A separate investigation by the district attorney has no end date, as Becton’s office chips through a backlog of police shootings and other incustody deaths.
At Holy Cross Cemetery, QuintoCollins finished placing her son’s urn in its glass case, alongside photographs and mementos. She watched as a man in coveralls emerged with a screwdriver, to seal the case shut.
Minutes later, her daughter, Bella Collins, stood outside and described a recurring dream: Her brother’s body is rotting. He realizes something is wrong, and he keeps asking the family for answers. But no one can explain.